


King of Starlight

by TheVelvetCoatedWonder



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Donkeyskin, Fae & Fairies, Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, Lancelot - Freeform, Lotor Zine 2018, M/M, The Good The Bad and The Beautiful: A Lotor Zine, The White Stag - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 13:31:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18316217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVelvetCoatedWonder/pseuds/TheVelvetCoatedWonder
Summary: Unseelie Fae are cold and cruel, Lotor knows this better than most. Zarkon, King of the Unseelie Fae, has robbed Lotor of his fate and marked him as a doomed prince. A chance encounter leaves Lotor with the will to fight back, but what can one prince do against ten thousand years of cruelty?





	King of Starlight

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! This has been the love child in the works since I think September/October of last year. This zine, The Good The Bad and The Beautiful, was my first zine and it was such a wonderful experience. I want to give a heartfelt thank you to the amazing mods that put all of this together and gave me the opportunity to fall so deeply down a rabbit hole I would have never otherwise discovered. I also want to thank my creative writing professor and my creative writing partner/fic beta because both of them listened to me yell about faerie and flower imagery for an entire semester (between my novel and this fic I don't know why my writing partner sticks around).

Lotor’s first breath was his mother’s last. As a princeling born unto death he himself was also doomed to die. He was doomed, dangerous, and beautiful- Lotor’s shining hair was as fine and silver as hoar frost, and he was just as cold and brittle. Crown princeling of the Unseelie fae, born unto the King of Ten Thousand years, Lotor had bowed under the weight of his destiny like wisteria droops under the weight of its blossom. Zarkon, a cruel king and crueler father, uncaring of his son’s foretold fate, forged Lotor in his own image, tempering him to cold, hard steel. Lotor did not crack or shatter; he did not break or warp; Zarkon tried to dowse his light but Lotor shone brighter.

The soft glow of his hoar frost had become the fierce cold shine of a star. Lotor had exchanged soft silver for sharp steel. As implacable as an ice floe, everything about him was still and frozen, void of life and doomed to die. Warmth leached away in the Unseelie court, swallowed by the void of Zarkon’s will.

To stay alive was easier said than done in the palace of the Unseelie court. The floors and walls were a seamless expanse of suffocating black marble. It was a labyrinth of shadow and light, with endless arches hung in spider web curtains- always trembling like a hapless victim was trapped within. Lotor was as strong as spider silk and yet could only flutter and flinch against the web his father wove, an unwilling agent of Zarkon’s will. He had bloomed here, and he would rot here, doom prying him apart from the inside out.

The one instance where Lotor felt alive, felt his blood thrumming through his veins hot and wet and primal in the way an Unseelie fae needed to feel, was that of the Wild Hunt. Called without warning but never without cause, Seelie and Unseelie Fae alike came together to embrace the savagery that set them apart from humans, chasing down some ethereal creature under the light of a full moon through old growth forests where rules and laws had no bearing. 

It was where Lotor’s pointed teeth and pointed claws became useful, not ornamental. He spurned a horse, preferring his feet to pound along the rot and loam of the forest floor. Drawing his great bow while under his own power- he imagined this was what it felt like to be free. Was this what other people, people with destinies, felt when their fate was realized?

Tonight they hunted a white stag, a Seelie fae knight leading the charge, hoping to catch the stag to learn of his next quest. White stags gave direction and guidance; chasing one was akin to chasing one’s destiny. Lotor was usually at the head of the pack, first in a long line of snapping teeth and gaping jaws and spindly limbs looking to catch and hold, but tonight he was at the back. To chase destiny but not be the one to catch it was too cruel a joke for Lotor to bear.

The hunt was long, and gruesome. The stag led them on a desperate chase through fen and forest, through misthung marshes and moonlit meadows, but when they caught it, it was not by the strength of their hunt. The stag fell, legs buckling, head tossing, heaving snorts of white breath into the crisp night as it let out a bellow of pain. It had broken its leg. 

The knight’s quest was now lame, his destiny shorn from glory, and the faerie- a young, spoiled thing Lotor thought- grew incensed that this was how it ended, over before it began. Lotor, who had faced that truth long, long ago, watched with a pinch in his brow as the knight stood over the stag, shining sword exchanged for inglorious hunting knife as he moved to slit the animal’s throat.

“Wait!” Lotor called, scarcely aware of himself as he did it.

The faerie looked up, insect eyes refracting moonlight and long tongue slithering out to taste the air. “Wait?” He asked. “I have waited five thousand years and you would ask me to wait yet longer?”

Lotor stepped forward, not knowing if he saw something of himself in the stag or the knight, “Killing this creature will not save your quest.”

The knight tilted his head, “Leaving it here dooms it to a slow death.”

A goose girl hissed in mirth, her daggers sheathed but her temper loose, “Let the princeling stay here and die with the deer if he is so inclined!”

A chattering rose within the hunt, and Lotor’s fate was sealed. 

The knight laughed, putting away his knife and remounting his horse. “If you wish to save this ruined stag, be my guest, Prince.” 

And in a thundering crowd the hunt was gone, leaving Lotor alone with the stag. It looked at him with its large dark eyes, breath still clouding the air and forelimb stretched in front of it. What Lotor knew of first aid he’d learned on himself, but he did his best to set and spell the limb, with a charm for numbness and a charm for quick healing, two of the only healing spells he knew. 

He did not speak to the stag, did not acknowledge his actions. Lotor knew this moment of pity would make it back to his father before he made it back to the castle, and he would no doubt be paying penance long after this stag was healed.

He stood to leave, eyeing the moon and thinking of which way he came, but he felt a push against his calf. He looked down, the stag was rubbing one great antler against his leg. Lotor moved to step away, but the animal huffed, tilting its head insistently. Lotor saw there were scraps of deer velvet hanging from its antlers, a sign that its horns were newly grown. He rubbed his hands across it, working the velvet into his palms. The deer was giving him a gift, thanking him with an offering of its body. The velvet smelled of earth and nutmeg, sweet and warm and very unfamiliar.

~~~

Lotor’s penance was cruel indeed. His father met him in the throne room, a flock of fae waiting to observe the princeling’s punishment. Lotor could offer his father nothing but his death. He faced his father with the two things Zarkon had offered him, and which Lotor had seized with both hands- his backbone of tempered steel and his cold, frozen heart. 

“My son, my only son,” the King drawled, watching Lotor for any hint of heart, “I have permitted your foolishness long enough. I think this fascination with the wood has taken a toll on you. It is time you ended it.”

Lotor felt the black marble of his father’s palace sucking him in like tar. He would never leave. He would be doomed to wander his father’s halls. Black would stick to him like pitch and his steps would be slow and heavy because he had not the will to lift his feet.

The cruel king continued, “We have no need for a forest ranger in my court.”

Speaking with an unsurpassable force of will, Zarkon cast a curse over Lotor, “You will leave here. You will take no home, no permanent residence, no hearth fire or warm blanket. If you love the woods and the animals so much, become like them- perhaps you will die a ditch fairy and we will hear of you in a folk song.”

~~~

Lotor had not expected banishment. Never banishment. As Lotor had felt his father’s curse drawing tight around him, Lotor was not filled with sorrow or shame but with shock. He knew his father always had a larger scheme in mind, but Lotor for his life could not figure out what the larger scheme here was. Still, he did not argue. While he missed his bed, his fine clothes, the delicate foods and well aged wines, he felt at peace for the first time in his life. The yawning black of the night sky held freedom in a way his father’s onyx halls never had. 

Lotor wandered, endlessly, the magic of his father’s bespelled banishment keeping Lotor from any rest longer than a few hours’ doze, and he never saw the same patch of greenery or stand of trees twice in a month, feeling an itch in his veins if he did not wander far enough afield. 

He was glad the spell did not keep him from leaving the woods entirely, for Lotor was discovering, with a simple clean joy, that there were particular havens and hideaways he would come back to again and again.

One of these was a pond at the base of a tall wooded cliff with a frothy waterfall that pounded the aches from Lotor’s shoulders while always being pleasantly cool but never cold. In the spring, on a bright full moon night with the clover in bloom, Lotor found himself up to his eyes in clear spring water, his clothes and sword on the bank, and an unknown someone creeping among the clover.

~~~

Lance only came because the clover was in bloom. Clover gathered under a full moon would be especially potent in his tonics and elixirs, and he was willing to brave the forest for such an ingredient. 

He knew an especially good spot, on the banks of a deep pool beneath a cliffside waterfall, where no one ever went except forest animals and the hedgewitch himself. With only his deerskin cloak and a drawstring pouch at his waist, Lance crept from the safety of the shadows to the clover patch, spread beneath the waterfall and lit up bright as day beneath the light of the full moon. The clearing seemed peaceful, nothing except the pounding of the water on the rocks. He moved quietly, soft deerskin making no noise, the white cloak almost glowing in the moonlight. His button nose and bright eyes were the only things visible beneath his deep hood. Alert for danger, he kept one eye out as he plucked the rich purple blooms from the clover patch and slipped them in the pouch at his waist.

A ripple from the pond caught the crouched boy’s attention. He looked up, freezing with one hand outstretched, balanced on the balls of his feet ready to run at any moment. The water’s surface broke to reveal a man, tall and broad and with his long hair streaming behind him in a waterfall of its own.

Lance saw the knife-sharp points of his ears and the purple of his skin, unable to stop his gasp. The man was an Unseelie Fae. There was an Unseelie Fae in his waterfall pool. 

Lance was within killing distance of an Unseelie Fae.

Lance had nothing but a handful of clover and his deerskin cloak.

~~~

Lotor observed the boy’s reaction to his entrance with fascination. He had fallen back, large dark eyes almost comically wide. This unexpected visitor was not two feet from the pommel of his sword. If he noticed, Lotor would be a dead man, and yet the boy looked as though Death were riding towards him.

Lotor waded for the shore, movements made slow and ominous by the weighty ripples of the water. He began making a tremendous splash when the water was only up to his calves, and he stopped between his sword and the boy, voice even and body naked as he said, “And what business does a human have in the forest?”

Lotor figured he was human, with his rounded ears, tanned skin and the sort of freckles no fae would let go unglamoured. 

The youth was fighting the minute trembles in his frame as he looked up into the face of the Unseelie before him, trying hard to keep from tracing the water droplets in his collarbones and the hollow of his navel. 

It was true what they said about the fae- their beauty was deadly, and Lance’s life was in danger.

“I- I’m a hedgewitch,” he stuttered, “And the clover should be gathered under a full moon.”

Apparently, the fae understood Lance’s nonsensical explanation, as he simply tilted his head, drops of water gone silver with starlight.

“A hedgewitch,” the faerie said, “And what do you call yourself, hedgewitch?”

“Lance,” he stuttered, reaching a hand out for a handshake and thinking distantly, and a bit hysterically, that he wasn’t sure the fae would know what he was doing. He then remembered hastily that fae held names in great reverence and that to give a fae your name was to give them power over you. He retracted the handshake to instead clap his hand over his mouth like he could take back a gift already and unthinkingly given.

His action must have made sense to the fae, for he smiled, “Do not worry, Lance, I will not hold your name against you. I gift you my own- Lotor.”

“Lotor,” Lance tried the name in his mouth, enjoying the way it rounded his tongue and pressed against his teeth.

The fae, Lotor, who seemed completely uncaring of the fact that he’d just shared his name with a near complete stranger, had put his long hair up in a wet bun and was now stepping into his pants.

“Why are you out here, in the wilderness, by yourself,” Lance began, figuring if he was to die it would have happened already, “and with a sword fit for a prince no less?”

Lotor looked up, hair falling from its bun and dripping with moonlight, “Because I am- or was- a prince.”

Lance tilted his head, “Is your father a king?” 

“They call him the King of Ten Thousand Years,” Lance watched as Lotor squeezed the water from his spider web hair, the droplets studding it as if dew, and a single bead falling down the plane of his cheekbone, tracing the musculature beneath.

“Is he a good king, to have ruled so long?” 

Lotor’s frame grew heavy, like a bough of blossoms gone wilted on the vine. He looked old and immeasurably sad.

“None of us know any different. I suppose he is an effective king, if nothing else.”

“But that is not the same as good.”

~~~

Lotor sat with Lance while he gathered his clover, and then, as the moon began to drop to the horizon, Lotor felt the itch in his bones. He walked with Lance to the forest line, feeling the curse’s pain recede. 

Standing between the forest and the field, Lance put up his hood and looked at Lotor, “Thank you for sitting with me tonight, Prince. You did not have to spare me, much less show me kindness, but you did, and for that you have my favor.” He leaned in, eyes glowing bright and liquid beneath the moon, each freckle a starburst across his cheeks, “You have been running for a long time, my Prince, but it is time you took up the chase. You have seen the stag, and cradled him in your hands. Evidence of your dreams is etched in velvet across your palms. Everything you need, you already have.” Lance leaned in even closer, placing a single kiss at the corner of Lotor’s mouth, “You will be a good king.”

Shocked, Lotor stared at the boy before him, and before he could find the breath which Lance had stolen from his lungs, he found himself staring at the white stag from the Wild Hunt.

The Unseelie fae had spent a full moon with the white stag at his elbow, had listened to him ramble about clover and feverfew. Lance had sat with him, knowing the faerie would not harm him because he’d been caught before and Lotor had shown him kindness then, too.

Lotor looked at Lance’s pouch of herbs, now strung around his neck as a deer. Lance’s cloak was nowhere to be seen, being the magical artifact which allowed him to take on the majestic bearing the prince saw before him.

Lance bowed his head and pushed one antler into Lotor’s hand again, encouraging him to anoint his hands once more. 

Gift freely given and received, the stag took off across the field, leaving Lotor to make his way through the forest. His feet turned to his fate and his hair shone like a diadem of stars even as the spires of his father’s castle blotted out the moon. Lotor was a true prince once more. 

Lotor was closer to the castle than he’d ever been since his banishment, the sinking cold of Zarkon’s curse trying to freeze his steps, when the prince heard a scream of pain that could have only come from a wounded animal. Fear nipping at his heels, Lotor raced for the source of the sound, and as he crossed beneath the barbed portcullis, Zarkon’s curse zinged over his skin like tiny, freezing spider bites. He ignored it as he saw the remains of a hunting party. The Wild Hunt had been called, and they had chased the stag: Lance.

He made for the throne room, jagged ears straining to cut through the silence. When he reached his destination, his return was heralded by crushing cloying pain all across his body and he saw Lance, bound and naked without his deer skin.

Zarkon, monstrous ruler and hard-hearted Unseelie, looked up from the human kneeling before him and said, “Lo and behold, I have the stag brought unto me and like a moth to the flame you follow.”

The prince, frantic for Lance’s fate, said only, “Let him go.”

He hoped his voice would ring like steel, but instead it fell like a flower blossom, too soft, too ephemeral, to call for lasting impact.

Zarkon’s laugh was the cruel cut of steel, dousing Lotor in hot shame as he was reminded of his frailties.

“What power have you, Lotor the forest fae, to demand upon me, King of Ten Thousand years?” Zarkon waved a hand dismissively, glancing away from his son and the stag, “This is the difference between you and I. You could never be ruler, Lotor,” he looked back, eyes slicing through his son as surely as a sword cut, “You’re soft. Silver where you should be steel.” 

Zarkon leaned forward in his chair, knowing his next words would leave Lotor cut to the quick this time, “I should have never let you linger this long. Your season is over, your star is set- it is past time you returned to beneath the earth.”

Lotor, once so used to hearing pronouncements upon his fate, felt the sting all over again. He gasped, head falling, hair spilling like a tumble of wisteria shorn from the vine. Hands clasped over his midsection, Lotor was bowed and heaving as Zarkon stood from his throne and advanced upon him.

Lance, swallowed by the black tar of the floor with tears in his eyes, no deerskin or antlers but only his open, freckled face, called urgently to Lotor, “Tonight, you told me you were a doomed child.” A single tear fell from his eye, and his voice cracked, “I see now this is what it looks like.”

The prince looked up, hooked by Lance’s words. 

“You are not doomed,” the hedgewitch finished, a sob ripped from him as Zarkon stepped over his bound body, “The king has doomed you.”

While a star may never be the brightest light in the sky, when it dies its light swallows even the darkest depths. Lotor, silver and starlight and hoarfrost, had been meant to die since the moment of his birth.

Zarkon drew his greatsword, declaring the cry that had won him his kingdom, “Victory or death.”

Lotor did not fear death. He’d known death’s callous hand longer than the touch of his own mother. He did not expect victory. Someone must always die, and Lotor knew this time it would be him. He drew his own sword, destiny across his shoulders and fate across his face, meeting his father’s first clash of steel with gritted teeth and aching arms, an explosion of starlight ringing out across the cold void of Zarkon’s unending dark. The king had killed entire armies, had wrought more death than anyone but himself could know. Lotor was one doomed prince against ten thousand years of cruelty, but with death at his side he had nothing to fear.

He met his father blow for blow, fearlessness giving way to flawlessness as Lotor drove Zarkon across the length of the throne room. His father had tempered Lotor to never fail or shatter, and the prince was indeed as steady as starlight, quicksilver to his father’s iron will, slipping away before a blow could land and seeping like water through the cracks his father’s greatsword was too large to cover.

“I have sat in your shadow for a thousand years,” Lotor called, “And I will be doomed no longer.”

With hair around him like a lunar halo, ice crystals ringed around the impervious shine that Zarkon had never been able to dim, Lotor beat his father past Lance, back up to the head of the hall, sword work dancing with death, the prince dauntless in his strikes, reckless in his evasions.

“Too long have you cited death to dog my footsteps.” Lotor swung once upon his father, “I have caught the great stag,” he swung again, “And I have my own destiny writ fresh upon my palms.”

Lotor swung a third time, and with a great ringing shriek he disarmed his father, ducking past the great sword in a move that unflinchingly flouted death.

“I will not be put beneath the earth,” he snarled.

Zarkon stumbled and fell beneath the weight of the prince’s onslaught even as Lotor continued, voice thick and eyes bright, “I am everything you would bury come back to haunt you, fate come to claim its due, destiny descended for the final reckoning.” The King, stretched across the steps to his own throne, stared up wide-eyed. Lotor, princeling doomed to die, looked like Death himself descending upon him.

“And that destiny does not include you.” 

With antler velvet gumming the grip of his sword in his palms, Lotor stabbed Zarkon upon his own throne, a great cry wrenched from his throat as he claimed recompense for the destiny so long thrust upon him.

There, in the ruined throne room, ten thousand years of monstrosities left limp upon the throne, the only sound to be heard was Lotor’s ragged breathing.

He stood, turning to Lance who looked at him without fear. Lotor, with his clawed hands and fanged teeth, sword bloody and face savage, looked like everything out of a nightmare, and yet Lance could only smile, thinking he looked like a fairy tale.

“You will be a good king,” he said simply, watching as Lotor knelt beside him, pulling a hunting knife to cut Lance’s bonds.

Lotor gave a brief smile, “And on whose authority do you speak?”

“I am the great stag, Lord of the Forest,” Lance declared, retaking his cloak from where it had been cast beside the throne, one white corner now besmirched with brown iron blood. “And I have given you every blessing, Lotor, King of Starlight.”

**Author's Note:**

> This fic ended up spawning a whole world around it that never made it into the final thing but I'd love to revisit. (If anyone knows the fairytale Donkeyskin, especially Robin McKinley's version Deerskin, Lance becomes a much more complicated character. I like to imagine Allura having to overthrow the cruel Seelie king who drove Lance to seek asylum away from court, and then Allura and Lotor fighting for Lance's hand or alignment.)
> 
> Thank you so much to any long time readers who come to check this out, I know this fic isn't Klance but I hope you enjoy. Also thank you to any new readers discovering this fic - please everyone go check out the other contributors to this project, they all made aMAZing stuff!


End file.
